djpretzel

Well, there's this: Which takes far more control from the end user, and requires no ink and paper, nor licensing under formal contract. Of course, they're in legal trouble right now I think if you look around at the EULAs for online competitions or free hosting services like YouTube, though, you'll see plenty of comparable, inkless, paperless agreements of this ilk. So, no. Also, you're bald.

Is that not good enough? Maybe it should be moved to a general section, as you suggest, since it applies equally to submitting artists and third parties...

You're agreeing to the content policy (once in effect) when you make the submission. Your ownership of the material is moot; you could be submitting an arrangement or an original that you owned 100% of the rights to. You're agreeing to let us distribute the piece as an OC ReMix, period. The only people who could sue would be the owner of the original, copyrighted material, e.g. Nintendo, since they never agreed to the policy in the first place. If Nintendo for some bizarre reason transferred full ownership of the original material to you as a ReMixer, you still couldn't sue, because you knowingly agreed to the policy. Or, rather, you could sue, and lose. So litigious! Do you really see it coming to this, anyways? Most of the points in your previous post center around legality, which is indeed slippery when we're talking about music that involves arrangement of copyrighted material. The important distinction is that we're focusing on the piece being presented as an OC ReMix more than anything else; you're free to distribute your music however you like, to whomever you like, so long as it's not presented as an OC ReMix. Once submitted to us, with acceptance of the content policy, we're the only ones who can really control where the mix is specifically presented as an OC ReMix. Realistically, that's laughable, as we're not going to police the entire Internet looking for hoodlums claiming their music is an OC ReMix and presenting it as such. But 100% enforceability is not necessarily the target; we're looking for a policy that protects mixers, protects the site, and doesn't focus as much on the content of the mixes (and their precarious copyright situation) as how the mixes are presented, i.e. as OC ReMixes, or not.

As a caveat that isn't at all intended to criticize anyone's mastery of the English language, we do intend to translate this into other languages once it is finalized. Obviously, however, for the point of providing feedback, we're stuck with the English version for better or worse. The point is that the mix is only available on OCR as an OC ReMix; it can be freely distributed elsewhere without "OC ReMix" labels of any kind, given the artist's permission. Well, I agree that OC ReMix is the one place I'd go to for video game mixes, and that the convenience of having everything together is beneficial. However, it's a large Internet, and trying to prevent distribution elsewhere would be, in my estimation, futile. Therefore, we're just trying to be honest about it, and also encourage that the site and artists be properly credited. As a side note, you'd be listed on last.fm regardless of whether or not we made songs available there; your artist profile was automatically created by virtue of being present in ID3 tags, which last.fm's database is built off of. We just made the music listenable and downloadable by registering as a label; the information regarding the tracks was already there. If the mix is your own, and you're mastering it & enhancing it, I don't see the problem - the "superior" version would still only be available on your licensed CD. If you wanted to start selling a piece of music you'd previously made available for free... good luck. We won't remove the track for that reason now, and we never would have, even before this policy was created. When you submit something here, you're making it freely available, period. If you can get a license and then sell the piece as well, that's fine, but it'll remain freely available here as well. Tens of thousands of people have already downloaded every single song on the site... it's out there, and trying to recall it would be, again, futile. First above all, ReMixers who submit their music because they think they're helping me personally should reevaluate their reasons for making music in the first place. This should be about honoring game composers and creating music for everyone, not just me. Secondly, we don't rename tracks on a whim. I admit that we used to, before people understood the concept of an original mix title and named their piece things like "Stage 1 Techno" all the time, but our submission standards spell this out, and once posted, we don't just decide we like a different name. I don't know where that's coming from, but it doesn't seem grounded in reality. Lastly, everyone's free to distribute their music elsewhere as they see fit... such distribution is not mutually exclusive with OC ReMix continuing to distribute their music as well. This honestly seems like a misunderstanding on your part.... Well, the lockdowns were problematic and potentially offensive in a number of ways. I really don't think we'll ever need to do anything remotely similar ever again. I can assure you that we didn't start quickly deleting pieces on a whim - on the contrary, the process was very long, drawn out, and involved revoting on a number of pieces and serious discussions on policy. That being said, lockdowns aren't explicitly part of this policy. We do reserve the right to remove pieces for a number of reasons, but the actuality is that we're not going to start randomly taking stuff down, as there'd be no reason to, when both the mixer and site staff expended a good deal of effort in making it available in the first place. Again, lockdowns are not part of the site's normal operating procedure, were done to correct mistakes almost entirely made by yours truly, and should never need to occur again. I don't rule out the possibility only because I hate having my words used against me, but I'd be very, very, very, very surprised if we ever had to do another lockdown. Ever. See my previous answer; nothing is prohibiting commercial sale of a previously posted mix, assuming the artist has obtained licensing permission, the piece is not being presented as an OC ReMix, and the label understands that a version of the track will continue to be distributed freely as an OC ReMix. However, if you really, really, really wanna rule out the possibility of being prevented from making money off your ReMix... don't submit it. We make music freely available. This is directly contrary to any intention to one day charge for it... That's partly why we're formalizing this policy. Even so, policing the entire Internet looking for artists being miscredited or ripped off is not within our power; if you want to spend the rest of your natural life tracking down such injustices, we're not stopping you. OC ReMix can deny that third parties continue to use mixes accredited to OC ReMix; if the submitting artist wishes that they continue using their work, they can personally allow the music to continue to be used, so long as references to OC ReMix are removed. I honestly don't see this coming up too often, but the musician has the last word. That's fair enough, and it's your call. Most seem okay with it, and most of the policy itself was already in effect, just not written down anywhere. You haven't raised any specific points that I would see as resulting in modifications to the document; you seem generally opposed to the notion of having any such policy whatsoever. We've already decided that a policy is needed, so the discussion of whether or not to have one isn't relevant. I think there's some minor misinterpretation, and I think your concerns about being able to sell your mixes after the fact are misguided. This site's about free music, always has been, and always will be.

They'd absolutely win; the subtlety here is that we're denying usage of the music specifically as an OC ReMix; if the mixer wanted the piece used but we didn't, for some reason, then the piece could still be used, but attribution to OCR would need to be removed. It's the attribution to OCR that we're concerned about, primarily; a mixer owns his or her music, and we can't say where they can or can't use it. If, however, the mixer was unreachable, or had not yet been contacted, then simply removing the attribution to OCR wouldn't be good enough, as the implicit allowance of use through the OCR policy would have been retracted.

Thank you sir; I've considered this suggestion and believe it makes sense. I've removed the "grudge clause" and simply indicated that we reserve the right to refuse removal requests, which is sufficient. I've added a line that clearly indicates that we're referring to public redistribution, and that modification for personal use is acceptable. As for the very tricky subject of prior submissions, made before this policy is formalized and put into effect... I don't know yet. One possibility is that, when submitting any future works, that mixer would also be agreeing that previously submitted works would be subject to the same policy... but for artists that never submit anything ever again, their stuff might be "grandfathered" under more lenient guidelines. I don't know, our previous policy was really almost identical, except that we never flatly refused to remove mixes, because I felt doing so without a formalized policy in place would be unfair. I have also updated the thread title to indicate that, unless there is ongoing, unresolved discussion that represents the concerns of multiple individuals, we aim to finalize this document next weekend on 5/27/07 and put it into effect immediately afterwards.

Final policy available at: http://www.ocremix.org/info/Content_Policy Comments, feedback, and discussion can still take place on this thread, since this is where most of the back and forth originally took place. We have enacted what we believe is a final policy that reaches an optimal balance between letting the site move forward and ensuring that the mutual interests of artists, listeners, and the site itself are respected. Revisions to the policy may still be necessary, but as of 6/12/2007 it is in effect in its current form.

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Our forums were down from around midnight EST last night to 9:00 AM EST this morning; I had intended to upgrade from vBulletin 3.6.4 to 3.6.6, and was in the process of doing so, when... my power went out. It stayed out until about 6:00AM this morning, a couple hours later I groggily rolled out of bed and completed the rest of the upgrade and corresponding template tweaks. If anything that worked before doesn't work now, please reply and describe in detail what's up. There were relatively few mandatory template tweaks involved, and 3.6.6 is the gateway to some pretty cool stuff the folks behind vb have been cooking up lately, some of which may be applicable to OCR.

word. to your mother. on her day.

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Seriously, if you're gonna buy tickets, this is the only group buy that's guaranteed to happen. This is gonna be a big event, Tommy's psyched, so even if you already bought tickets, you might wanna mention/invite other people who might be interested.

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We are working on a formalized policy that will spell this out in more detail; I've run it by the judges panel for feedback and will run it by the community at large before finalizing it.

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Whether you CAN use a linux box to make music isn't debatable; as you mention, numerous operating systems that are far more limiting can be used to compose. What we're really talking about here is anything approaching feature parity with the dominant commercial OS's, Windows and OSX. It's a matter of usability, convenience, and quality, and it's partisan *nix bullshit to claim otherwise: quite clearly, there are benefits to using professional audio software, and quite clearly, very few of the commercial plugin developers are targeting linux. It's not a question of whether it's possible, but whether you'd want to. This factors directly into viability, which isn't a boolean, but a spectrum. I was unaware that anyone had successfully wrapped Windows VSTs for Linux; seeing as plenty of VSTi plugins are unstable enough on Windows as is, I think the "as far as I know" part of your comment is suspect. I didn't see compatibility lists of any kind, screenshots, or even what I'd call straightforward directions and instructions, so while it appears someone's accomplished this task to some extent, the extent itself remains shadowy at best. This is a common problem among linux advocates: someone asks whether something is possible, or whether X feature has been implemented, and the answer is always "yeah, sure, that's been done... it's still got some issues that are being worked out." Which is a fine answer for a labor of love that someone's using as a hobbyist in their spare time, but for anything involving professional work, where deadlines matter and "when it's ready" isn't good enough, that dog won't hunt. Furthermore, many promising linux projects tend to reach 60-70% completion levels and then stagnate indefinitely. For understandable reasons, of course - this is pro bono software development we're talking about, after all - but still problematically. You can't have your cake and eat it too - all too often, people herald the benefit of open, standards-based software, but turn a blind-eye to the support issues, lack of feature parity, and high abandonment and stagnation figures associated with it. Keep in mind, I'm not a Microsoft bigot by a longshot, and love my Firefox. I just calls 'em like I sees 'em. I think this is a hugely important point because, unless a earth-shattering, groundbreaking, world-bending event occurs, linux is at best gaining desktop acceptance at a glacial pace, even slower in professional arenas where the use of tools like Photoshop, Logic, Pro Tools, Cubase, etc. is absolutely required. I think the best chance for adoption is a "can't beat 'em, join 'em" attitude, and wrapping VSTs effectively would be a huge step - all of the myriad freeware VST/VSTis could be part of readymade distributions, putting very formidable power in one's hands for free. And, if the wrappers were effective enough, allowing upgrade paths to full versions of commercial windows plugs that, like it or not, pretty much rock the socks off anything I've seen anyone put together for free. Don't get me wrong, the people writing native linux audio tools are saints, geniuses, and deserve the highest praise. I just personally think it's still nowhere near as mature a platform, and that the best way of attaining viability is through compatibility, not creating new standards and implementations.

If it were somehow possible to create a wrapper for VSTs... that would seriously change the ballgame. I'm not sure what exactly would be entailed to enable that - whether bits of WINE would be helpful, if it's even possible to achieve with any acceptable degree of latency, etc., but that'd be a major catalyst. Without VST, DXI, DirectX, AU, RTAS, or TDM support of any kind, the OS can still go far for multitrack audio recording and editing, which is a totally viable use, but is severely stunted for anything else. A wrapper like that would be paradigm-shifting... wonder if anyone's working on it. There's a Java wrapper that lets you write VSTs/VSTis in Java, so clearly some degree of interception is possible, even though it's not the same thing by a longshot...

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Truly awesome news.

I dunno about blogger as the final destination for this... limited presentation & functional customization options. A custom install of wordpress that we can play around with seems most appropriate, I'd say. We should talk requirements and potential expansion, but since this is "official OCR business" we can host it. Yes, it's convenient that blogger users don't have to register yet another account, but the functionality gained by a separate wordpress install that we control is considerable.

If it wasn't clear from the '07 state of the remix address, basically I'm far more interested in seeing OCR cooperate with other sites, like pandora or more likely last.fm, than trying to custom code everything and the kitchen sink. If other folk want to try coding a single site that does a million different things, I admire the perseverance and optimism involved, but I'd rather do a few things, do them well, and see what the rest of the Internet can handle via integration. Last.fm has a tagging feature and we're working on linking individual tracks up with their database, so it's possible that you'd see a last.fm tagcloud integration, among other things. The licensing for Pandora appears to require that the music in question be commercial, which ours is not, but I'll keep looking into it since a lot of people I know like it. The most likely version of anything like what's being proposed, in the shorter term at least, will revolve around what we can do with last.fm specifically.

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Get some video coverage up on YouTube so we can all see + I'll add it to the OCR group.

I'm now pitching in personally. Word.

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